


Back Then It Seemed Like So Much

by Duck_Life



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Christmas, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 05:33:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9221177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Maggie Rhee, the things she carries with her, and the things she had to leave behind.





	

Christmas is supposed to be about the people you spend it with, not the things you give or the things you receive. Her mother used to decorate the tree with her, lifting her up to put the angel on top. Her mother used to make cookies, sing songs, and Maggie spent every Christmas morning curled up on her mother’s lap.

And then her mother got sick, and then her mother died. And Maggie couldn’t spend Christmas with her anymore, but she had the cookie cutters and she had the angel.

On Christmas Eve, her step-mother used to sit them all down, Lacey and Shawn and Maggie and Beth, and tell them all the nativity story. And she’d bring out her nativity set, with the tiny baby Jesus and the hay hot-glued to the manger. And the figurines of Mary and Joseph, and the wise men, the animals and the angel Gabriel.

And then her step-mother died, and then Lacey and Shawn. Her dad told her they got sick, and her dad told her he could help them, and it took a long time for Maggie to know that they were dead before they ever went into the barn. But she had the barn, and the nativity set, little baby Jesus and the angel Gabriel.

Hershel was a mall Santa for a few years, and Maggie and Beth used to go stand by the line and blab to the kids that it wasn’t really Santa Claus, it was their daddy. Eventually, he had to bribe them with dolls he bought at the toy store in the mall to shut them up. A blonde one for Beth and a brunette for Maggie.

And then her dad died, and she didn’t have the doll anymore, or the nativity set or the angel. She had a knife. She had her wedding ring. She had a long way to go.

Beth used to start listening to Christmas music on November first, every year. And not just listen, but belt them out, sing them loud enough for everyone on the farm to hear. She’d be in the chicken coop singing “All I Want For Christmas Is You” and Maggie could hear her all the way in the house.

The thing about watching her dad die, the thing that hurts the most, is that she can remember Beth screaming beside her, crying, frantically trying to work her gun. She can remember everything about that day; she revisits it in her nightmares. She remembers standing beside Beth, and then suddenly Beth’s gone.

And Maggie looked and looked and couldn’t find her. Until the day she did.

And when Beth died, Maggie didn’t have anything left. She didn’t have the doll or the nativity set or the angel. She couldn’t hold onto the songs Beth used to sing or that last memory of her screaming by the prison fence.

Carl gave her a music box that didn’t work. Something that used to sing, silenced. And so that was what she had to remember Beth.

And then Glenn died, and he wasn’t sick and he didn’t get attacked by walkers. He didn’t get kidnapped or go missing. He just died, suddenly and brutally, and then suddenly she had too many things. She had his pocket watch and it felt too heavy to hold, all that time he could have had. She gives it away, tells Sasha she doesn’t need anything to remember all the people she doesn’t get to spend Christmas with.

But she still has the music box. It works now, and after Rick brought it for her with some other things from Alexandria, she keeps it on her windowsill in her Hilltop room.

The tiny ballerina twirls and the music tinkles out, and she reaches down and puts a hand on her swollen belly, feels her baby kick. Her baby won’t have a father or grandparents or an aunt.

Her baby will have a home. Apple pie and fresh cucumbers and a warm bed. Her baby will have her.

The music box turns and turns and Maggie looks down at her wedding ring. She doesn’t have a picture of Glenn. She has Enid’s green balloons and her wedding ring. She has her baby.

The music box turns and Maggie lifts a hand to wipe the tears from her face, and then Sasha pokes her head into the room.

“Madame President,” she teases, “if you don’t get out here there’s not gonna be any hot chocolate left for you.” Maggie turns around and Sasha actually gets a good look at her face. “Hey…”

“I’m okay,” Maggie says, wiping her eyes again.

“We’re all here,” Sasha reminds her, and Maggie doesn’t have the nativity set anymore but she does have a real-life Jesus. And Gabriel, too. She’ll never get to hear Beth’s Christmas carols again. But she does have Carol. She has a whole family of angels and wise men. She has Rick and Carl and Michonne and Rosita and Eugene and Morgan and Aaron and Daryl and Tara. She has Enid and Sasha.  

After all, Christmas is supposed to be about the people you spend it with, not the things you give or the things you receive.


End file.
